


Learn The Sea

by Raven (singlecrow)



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-27 01:12:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1709552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Well, now, little one,” McCoy says. “What’s your name?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learn The Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Познай море](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3289517) by [Lazurit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lazurit/pseuds/Lazurit), [WTF_Star_Trek_2015 (WTF_Star_Trek_Reboot_2014)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WTF_Star_Trek_Reboot_2014/pseuds/WTF_Star_Trek_2015)



No one is surprised when the Enterprise is called off course to make an unscheduled visit to the Vulcanis Lunar Colony. It’s a tiny science station and settlement of ancient foundation, on a small moon known for its seismological activity about a thousand light years from where Vulcan used to be. Despite the great distance, there were Vulcan ascetics contemporaneous with Surak who believed it was once Vulcan’s only moon, ripped from its orbit by a passing star before the dawn of life in the desert. Whether or not that’s true, no one seems to know, but in the meantime, there is the science station, and there are the Vulcans.

On the last night’s journey into orbit no one can sleep. McCoy dispenses small doses of sleep-aid for some and hot milk for others. He sends Chapel to bed to get what rest she can, and sits up himself, cross-legged on a gurney in the darkened infirmary, reading, wishing for a drink. He’s tried to raise the lights and watched them dim again; there are minor malfunctions all over the ship. It’s pushing four am and ship’s dawn when Kirk stops at the sickbay threshold and says, “Bones.”

"Yeah, Jim." McCoy had dozed off, maybe. "What do you need?"

"Subspace breaches. Communications malfunctions." Kirk steps inside, then out again. "It’s a long way from anywhere."

"Yeah, Jim, I know." McCoy sits up, hugging his knees.

"What if" - his eyes are troubled - "I have to - what if they don’t know? That they can’t go home?"

"I don’t know, Jim," he says, and just for a moment McCoy is in Georgia, in front of an open French window, looking up into the clear night sky and the only place left to run. "God, I don’t know." 

In the morning they make selenostationary orbit and Spock suggests they don’t transport to the surface because the malfunctions are getting worse, and McCoy doesn’t even bother trying to hide his gratitude. On the viewscreen a dignified Vulcan woman with a hood over her eyes says, “We bid you welcome, Enterprise” - so McCoy, Kirk and Spock take one of the aft shuttles down to the surface. None of them have slept, so Spock does the piloting, breaking through layers of cloud and mist with no appreciable difference to his reaction times, although his voice is hoarse when he turns over to ground control. They make planetfall and the computer releases the pressure on the shuttle doors, but all three of them take a few moments to move and McCoy has more sympathy for Spock than for Jim. Kid wanted to be captain, and this is what captains do: they go out to the limits of charted space and tells quiet good people that everything they know has gone. McCoy can’t even look at Spock, right now. 

The doors finally open on a misty landscape and the metallic bulk of the science station. McCoy can see the lights flickering at the windows. They walk slowly and tiredly up to the main doors and a voice says, “Captain Kirk, Doctor McCoy, Commander Spock.” 

"Hi," McCoy says. "Guess you’re in charge here."

"I am Subcommander T’Meni." She looks more like a scholar than a soldier, like every Vulcan McCoy has ever known. "Thank you all for coming."

Kirk seems frozen, as though he’s putting it off one more moment; Spock’s attention has been caught by something else. He gets down on his knees and this time McCoy catches the flash of movement, too, the little face peering out from behind his - mother? McCoy glances up at T’Meni, and then down again, decides there’s a family resemblance. “Well now, little one,” McCoy says. “What’s your name?”

The kid doesn’t say anything, looking scared with his eyes huge and dark and his expression adorably serious. McCoy guesses he hasn’t seen a human before. “My son, Doctor,” T’Meni says to McCoy, and then Spock does something McCoy never expected: he reaches down and picks the kid up, murmuring something in Vulcan. The kid answers, first in sweet, archaic Vulcan, and then in Federation Standard, “My name is Tuvok!”

Spock swings him upwards, like human parents do with their children, and Jim’s looking as surprised as McCoy feels right now. He takes a visible deep breath and says, “Subcommander T’Meni. I understand that subspace communications in this region of space are not reliable. But Starfleet has sent us here to tell you…”

"They know, Captain," Spock says tiredly. He looks from Kirk to T’Meni and back again. "They know."

He’s let Tuvok settle, balanced on his hip; the kid doesn’t seem bothered by being picked up by a stranger, and McCoy recalls that for Vulcans, all are family. He breathes in, breathes out, and says, formally to Spock and T’Meni, “I grieve with thee” - and then scrubs his eyes with the heels of his hands, thinking about Amanda Grayson, about all those Vulcans he’s known, connected telepathically to their entire race at the moment of its destruction, about that night in Georgia when he had nowhere left to run. 

T’Meni observes them diplomatically, and then says, “You had best come inside.”

Kirk and T’Meni walk into the science station slightly ahead of Spock, McCoy hanging behind. He’s working on his breathing, clearing his thoughts, in, out, in, out, breathe out grief, breathe in calm. When he’s sure that any touch of his mind won’t scare the kid, he kisses the top of Tuvok’s head, thinking, _and with thee, little one_ \- and Spock looks at him like he understands, like in his way, he’s grateful, and they go inside.

**Author's Note:**

> Canonically, Tuvok was born on the Vulcanis Lunar Colony more than a hundred years before he appears in Voyager - meaning not only that he was a toddler when the TOS crew were roaming around the universe, but he exists in the reboot.


End file.
